"Say something." I whispered gently into my hands.
"Say anything." I said looking at the scuffs on my shoes.
  "Say you love me." I pleaded.
  "Say you hate me." I begged.
"Just say something, damn it!" I cursed into the sleeve of my sweater.
"God, just please don't make me go."
With no reply I quietly rose from my seat and walked out of the room. The click of my shoes on the linoleum floors were the only sound I heard.
The bitter wind hit me as the doors opened and I wrapped my jacket and scarf closer to my body. I had parked the car farther away that day. Maybe it was in hopes that if I took longer than usual something would change. It didn't matter if it was good or bad but I yearned for something to break up the silence.
As if my fingers were frozen, I couldn't get them to stick my key in the key hole. My fingers shook uncontrollably and I dropped my key under the inches of snow on the ground. I dug my fingers where an indent was made from the key and grasped it in my hands. This made my hands colder and I grunted in frustration.
After a few moments of struggling I turned around and sunk into the ground against my car. The snow began to seep into my shoes and thin jeans but it didn't even begin to numb me. I was too cold already for anything to make a difference and yet too hot at the same time; so hot that I took my coat off and let it fall next to the driver side door.
I sank further into the ground and let my bottom hit the thin layer of ice under the snow. An elderly woman passed by me and looked at me concerned. I shook my head and she continued walking out of the parking structure. No one could help.
Another bitter wind knocked through the parking garage and took me away with it. If I was drawn into a picture I was sure you could see pieces of me flying away with it. I was not sturdy. I couldn't make decisions alone or stick to the ones chosen for me. I was like a flower and whenever the wind blew I blew with it.
That's why I needed him.
I needed him to tell me it was going to be okay. I needed him to tell me I was stronger than I thought I was. I needed him to tell me he was going to be okay.
I was only met with silence. It was not full, but also not completely empty, like someone had filled a glass and dumped it out. I knew there was something in there before but now all that was left behind was a watery residue mocking me by not dripping off the sides and ending my misery.  I think my love of words is what made the silence so loud; what still makes the silence so loud. It echoes through my head and it wakes me up in the middle of the night with vapid screams. 
I could not be asked to choose a favorite word any sooner than I would be able to answer with a favorite child or parent or song or part of my body. We need each part in order to understand the other. You need the left in order to move the right and you need to right so you can tell what is wrong. We need the grotesque words, the silly ones that slip off our tongues, the sad ones that pain you and make you cringe when they're spoken out loud, even the ones that we don't understand at all. We need every part of the spectrum, we need the top and the bottom and the middle.
  I love every word. I don't love them all in the same way the way you do not love a child the same way as another. Each word is special; they carry their own meanings and sounds and weight in conversation. I love the ones we can say out loud and the ones we have to say to ourselves. I love the words that don't get spoken and the ones that are worn out by tired mouths.
Words are never too difficult. There is always a word for what you are feeling or showing or holding and if there isn't one will be created. There is a phrase for what you need and want and there is always a way to find one.
Words, broken down to the frame, are letters pushed together, sometimes against their will. They create phonemes and morphemes and then whole words that can be broken down further into syllables and prefixes and suffixes that make words plural and singular and multifaceted. Twenty six letters create every word you have every spoken or read or will speak or will read. Twenty six letters create an entire network of possibilities and opportunities to say whatever you want to say.
It seems so easy to say them when they're all laid out in front of you in their perfect outfits and everyone is saying them together. It gets more difficult to say them when you're the only one speaking-a phenomenon I didn't experience until I was twenty.
There's a saying, "You don't know what you've got until it's gone." I thought I loved words more than anyone else in the world ever could. You can't appreciate speaking until you've heard the silence of someone's shaking breath so close to saying anything to you but they choose not to. That person chooses silence instead of saying something, anything, a lie, the truth, a made up story.
He spoke in silence and it was more truthful, more beautiful, and more heartbreaking than any word he could have said.
He has never done anything wrong in my mind. He is my personal angel and my most desperate plea. He is the oxygen, the carbon, the light, the clouds, everything good that makes up this world. He is the only thing I have wanted and never truly had. He is my addiction and my intervention. He is too good for me but God if I stop trying to be good enough for him it will be the day I no longer breathe. He is my sickness and I would gladly suffer for an ounce of what he is.